Pro Bono Law Alberta (PBLA) has a mission to improve access to justice by increasing the scope and availability of pro bono legal services for low income Albertans. One of the ways PBLA makes this mission possible is through Volunteer Lawyer Services.
Volunteer Lawyer Services (VLS) is a program that matches charitable organizations and low income individuals with volunteer lawyers who provide pro bono legal services. There are a wide variety of cases that come through VLS – from Bylaw Reviews, Child Support Applications, to Contract Disputes. Whatever your specialty or interest, VLS will have a case for you. In addition, because of the types of files that VLS handles, many of the pro bono cases are often perfect opportunities for lawyers to use Limited Scope Retainers. PBLA has also created a Limited Scope Retainer Webinar that you can refer to for more information.
While charitable and non-profit organizations files come directly through PBLA to our volunteers, individual clients are only brought to VLS through referrals from Legal Aid and other approved legal clinics in Alberta. This ensures that the files have gone through a thorough intake and assessment process, and that they have received some form of vetting and legal assistance prior to being passed to VLS.
Getting Involved
There are a number of ways to get involved, including opportunities for private practitioners, in-house counsel, government lawyers, students-at-law, and retired lawyers and judges. As a lawyer with VLS, you get to choose your case, define the scope of your involvement, and decide whether taking that case meets with your time constraints and comfort level.
New Program Coordinator
Joshua Lam, a lawyer who recently returned from doing Human Rights work in East Africa, is the new VLS Program Coordinator. Together with PBLA Program Manager Kendall Moholitny, he looks forward to ensuring that volunteer lawyers get a menu of interesting files to choose from and the support they need while working on the file.
To learn more about VLS, contact Program Coordinator Joshua Lam at [email protected], phone 403-541-4803, or visit www.pbla.ca.
As a lifelong partner of legal education in Alberta, LESA would like to help promote communication initiatives within the legal community. If you have an initiative or project that would be of interest to the legal community, please contact to Communications Manager Linda Wilkinson at [email protected].
